Sleepless in Novac
by NilesDaughter
Summary: The Courier finds her mind restless with thoughts about the man that tried to kill her, keeping her from sleep. So, she goes to the only person in Novac that she trusts: the man that may or may not be her traveling companion. Implied BoonexCourier.


**Author's Note: Hello, everyone! I have another one-shot for you all! Well, Ronin201 made me start to play _Fallout: New Vegas_. And I maybe accidentally fell in love with the game. I really like the gameplay, the story, and the graphics. But the problem with Ronin being the one to introduce me to the game is that I have become biased towards the characters he likes. So, I've grown attached to Boone. And have spoiled things about him, both by accident, and because of Ronin telling me stuff before I was ready to hear it. Meaning I have a lot of feels about Boone. It kind of sucks. That aside, I may or may not slightly ship Boone with the female version of the Courier _ So, that's where this one-shot came from! Please note that the way I wrote the Courier is not _my_ Courier in gameplay. I wrote the Courier for this piece a little bit vaguely so that anybody could enjoy it, a sort of reader-insert without being a reader-insert, if you will. I hope you like it (even with my cheesy titles).**

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The Courier let out a breathy sigh of relief. When she'd first seen the towering dinosaur statue upon her arrival in Novac, she had thought it be tacky. But after the past couple of days, which had been full of fighting feral ghouls and Nightkin, and running errands for Jason Bright, Dinky the T-Rex was a very welcome sight. After all, Dinky marked the location of the Dino Dee-lite Motel, and that, in turn, meant that she was not far from a bed.

She glanced back to check that her companion was still following her. Craig Boone continued to look tense, and the Courier was certain that it was because, behind his sunglasses, his eyes were still scanning the Mojave Wasteland for threats. Even if they were almost to Novac, they couldn't be too careful. Not when the wildlife that inhabited the Wastes usually liked to pounce on unsuspecting travelers.

She turned back to the road before, cheeks flushed slightly with embarrassment. She should have been just as vigilant as Boone was, instead of fantasizing about how good a mattress would feel cradling her sore body. But she did suppose that was the benefit of having the sniper as a traveling companion. Even if the Courier herself was less-than-stellar in her treks into the Mojave, at least Boone made up for her shortcomings, however unintentional.

Regardless, it was always better to be safe than sorry in the Wasteland, so she drew her favored 9mm pistol. In addition to Boone's watchful eye, the pistol gave her a sense of security.

Thankfully, the last stretch of the journey proved uneventful, and they reached Novac safely, though it was well after the sun had set. The Courier paused at the foot of the stairs that would lead her up to the second floor, and she glanced back at Boone, unsure of what to say to him.

"...Uh, thanks for helping me out with that ghoul problem."

Boone just nodded a little. "Sure."

The Courier bit her bottom lip. She still couldn't tell if the sniper found her annoying, or if he was always this prickly. Regardless, she always felt like she had somehow managed to offend him, and it never failed to bother her.

"Well, uh...Good night, I guess?" she added helplessly.

"'Night," Boone replied and headed down to his own room, on the ground floor, a couple of doors away.

The Courier sighed softly and proceeded to slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor, and unlocked the door of one of the rooms, using a key that had been gifted to her by Cliff Briscoe after the...untimely death of Jeannie May Crawford. The Courier desperately hoped that the people of Novac wouldn't connect the crime to her or to Boone, but at the same time, it seemed as if they couldn't have cared less. Besides, even if they did find out, would they really care? There was one less person trying to dabble in the slave trade, one less person toying with human lives for the sake of profit. And the fact that Boone's late wife had been carrying a child at the time…

The Courier shook a little bit, trying to clear the thoughts from her mind as she pushed open the door to what was now considered her room. It wrenched at her heart that Boone had lost so much, and she so desperately wished that she could forget the contents of that damnable bill of sale.

"Stop it. You're just going to depress yourself," she muttered under her breath. "What's done is done."

She sighed and finally closed the door behind her, and cast a glanced around the motel room.

There was a queen-sized bed pushed up against the wall, framed by a couple of nightstands. Beneath the boarded-up window on her left, an old couch remained mostly intact, if a little dusty. On the side of the bed that wasn't occupied by the couch, there were two chairs and a tiny table. Behind the door stood a coat rack, a desk, and an abandoned suitcase. The room also held a footlocker, a dresser, a wardrobe, and a refrigerator.

The Courier was impressed, and grateful for the fact that she now had someplace to call her own. Not to mention the added advantage of all the storage space available for her use. She began to take off her gear, storing her supplies accordingly.

After she'd stripped down to her underwear, the Courier padded into the bathroom, and turned on the sink, cupping a hand beneath the faucet. She leaned down to take a sip, the Pip-Boy that Doc Mitchell had given her click-clicking as she drank the radiated water. She ignored the device, mostly because she preferred to keep a hold of her purified water for when she set out into the Wastes.

Once she satisfied her thirst, she shut off the stream of water and left the bathroom, crossing to the bed. She crawled underneath the covers, and finally lay her head on the pillow with a very satisfied sigh. It felt so nice to be able to relax her muscles in an actual bed, and not on a simple sleeping cot that she stumbled across in an abandoned camp somewhere out in the Mojave. Sleep should come easy, and it would be a very welcome reprieve from all the adventure of the past few days.

x-x-x-x-x

" _From where you're kneeling, it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is...the game was rigged from the start."_

The Courier sighed, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep hadn't been as easy as she had hoped. And that was because, the moment she had closed her eyes, her mind's eye conjured up sensations of being suffocated by dirt, of hanging somewhere between life and death, and not knowing if anyone would come to her rescue or not. She didn't actually remember being in her would-be grave, of course, but her imagination sure was eager to help fill in the blanks.

Furthermore, she couldn't help but think about the man that had tried to kill her. She still couldn't understand what had been so important about her package. What was so special about a platinum poker chip? Why had the man in the checkered suit felt the need to go so far as to shoot for her for it? None of it made sense. What made even less sense was why she felt so driven to chase the man across the Mojave.

She wasn't really a vengeful person. At least, she didn't think so. She just couldn't stand it when people mistreated others. After all, that sense of morality in a hellish world was what had gotten her into so many of her misadventures since she'd left Goodsprings. So even if she wasn't out for vengeance, she still harbored some bitterness with the man with the checkered suit. She didn't even know what she planned to do with the man once she tracked him down.

Would she kill him? Or was she just desperate to ask him why? After all, he had said that the attempted murder wasn't personal. His real interest had just been that stupid chip. But why?

Groaning, the Courier sat up, taking a look around the motel room, trying to ease her racing thoughts. The room was still dark, so it was probably still very late. And it was also very quiet, eerily so, and all of sudden it seemed much too big and empty for just her…

She kicked off the covers in an instant, crossing to the door in the next. As an afterthought, she backtracked to the wardrobe and fished out a pair of pants and a shirt. After she'd tossed them on, she headed back towards the door, grabbing her key on the way out. The moonlight seemed to be her only illumination, but it was enough for her to follow the second floor catwalk and went down the flight of stairs. Once on the ground floor, she went a couple doors down and knocked.

Just as the Courier was beginning to worry that he wasn't going to answer - after all, what reason did he have to do so? - the door opened, and Boone glared out at her.

"Do you realize how late it is?" he demanded gruffly.

The Courier was startled; Boone looked quite different without his sunglasses on. His eyes were surprisingly harsh.

Once she'd gotten over the shock of coming face to face with her potential traveling companion, the Courier then found herself being amused. Boone was normally the one acting as Novac's night watch, so she thought it was a little funny that he seemed so annoyed that she'd come to see him in the early hours of the morning. But the amusement passed quickly when she realized that Boone was starting to look quite impatient.

She cleared her throat before she spoke, trying to articulate a proper answer. "Uh, sorry...I just...Look, you're one of the only people that I feel like I can trust. I don't know why. I just do. So, I didn't know where else to go."

When Boone continued to glare at her, she sighed. Clearly, her reply had been as lame as it had sounded...She decided to try a more straight-forward answer.

"I couldn't sleep, okay? May I please come in?"

Based on the way that he kept glaring, the Courier figured that she had been stupid to come to him in the first place. Besides, she told herself, Boone had absolutely no reason to even let her into his own space. She wasn't even all-too-sure why she had asked to come in. That had sounded a little weird, to be honest.

"Sorry, that sounded incredibly stupid. I'll just—"

"Come in."

She blinked. "What?"

"Come in," he repeated. "Before I change my mind."

She nodded fervently and slipped inside. As soon as she did, she glanced around the room. It was pretty similar to hers, at least in the sense of its blueprint—after all, it was still a motel room—but that was where the similarities ended.

The bed was on the opposite wall from hers was in the room above, and the couch was against the wall opposite the bed instead of under the window. Whereas her room seemed stuffed with pre-war furnishings, Boone's room seemed lacking in them. To top it off, there was hardly any sign that Boone lived here, since none of his things looked like they were around. If she didn't know better, the Courier would have thought that this particular room was uninhabited. She frowned a bit, but recalled that Boone had once been in the NCR, so the Spartan appearance must have been residual organizational skills learned from his time in the First Recon.

"This is...nice," she offered lamely.

"You shouldn't try the small talk approach," he said. When the Courier gave him a strange look, he added, "You're not really good at it."

Her cheeks flushed with indignation. "Oh, shut up."

Boone shrugged a little bit, and then crossed to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. She continued to hover by the door awkwardly.

"So, uh...I didn't wake you up, did I?"

He shook his head. "I haven't gone to bed yet."

"Why not?"

"I usually take the night watch, so this isn't a time I'm used to sleeping at. I would've have gone up to Dinky's mouth, but since we got back late from the REPCONN site pretty late, I figured there wasn't any point in relieving my sub."

She nodded a little. "Right...Uh, thanks again, by the way. For helping out with Jason and everything else...I really appreciate the help…"

"Don't mention it."

Silence stretched between the two of them for a long time before the Courier spoke again. "So, uh, was something keeping you up?"

Boone's eyes flashed dangerously. "That's none of your business."

She shrank back from his gaze. "S-sorry, I didn't mean to...I mean…" She sighed and looked away. "Never mind. It wasn't my intention to pry, though…" she added quietly, almost certain that her careless comment had opened a can of worms she was nowhere near ready to open.

"Then don't say anything in the first place," he snapped.

The Courier just nodded awkwardly, remembering how, in only the course of a few days, Boone often managed to make her feel like she had just been scolded by a parent. As the silence grew between them again, she began to fidget a bit. Boone sure did make it hard to keep a conversation going...She was beginning to wonder if he really didn't want to travel with her as a companion. After all, despite what he had said about wanting to leave Novac behind, the Courier doubted that he'd be any better with her.

"...Why couldn't you sleep?" Boone asked softly, hesitantly, which startled her again.

"Uh…"

"I am sorry for snapping at you. But I really don't think you want to listen to my fucking baggage," Boone said, confirming her suspicions, albeit indirectly. "And I'm shit at socialization, but you did look pretty distraught when you got here, so…" he trailed off uncomfortably.

"R-right…" She bit her lip, and looked down at her feet. "...I just keep thinking about the man that shot me...I have so many questions, and I really want answers…" The Courier sighed. "And the room that Cliff gave me felt...off." While Boone had warmed up, even if only for a second, she still didn't feel comfortable explaining that she'd felt alone in the motel room. Impossibly alone.

Now that she thought about it, ever since the man in the checkered suit had shot her, the Courier had developed an odd dependency on company. She felt fine when she had been in Goodsprings, and in Primm, and at the Mojave Outpost. She had been around other people in those places, and she'd felt at ease, had felt a sense of peace. But anytime she had been by herself, traveling between towns...Well, that had been awful, and more than a little nerve-wracking.

That was probably part of why she was desperately hoping that Boone would still want to travel with her. She needed at least one more person with her, or she feared she'd go mad before she even reached New Vegas.

"...This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but do you think I could crash in here tonight?" she asked quietly. "I swear I won't bother you or anything. Hell, I'll even—"

"I'll take the couch, you take my bed."

The Courier blinked in surprise. "Are you sure? I could just as easily take the couch…"

"Just sleep on the bed," Boone almost-growled as he grabbed one of the pillows off the bed and crossed to the couch.

"Are you sure?" the Courier asked again, watching him.

"Just shut up and sleep."

The Courier felt a small smile pull at her lips, and she finally allowed herself to cross the room to lay down on Boone's bed.

As much as Boone reminded the Courier of a cactus—extremely prickly—he seemed like a pretty good guy. At least he seemed to care, which was more than she could say for most of the Wasteland's residents.

Soon after, she heard the gentle rhythm of Boone's breathing, and that actually helped lull the Courier into a mostly-peaceful sleep.


End file.
